My school recently bought all students chromebooks and it got me thinking. If they can buy 5000 chromebooks for 20$ a pop, why does it cost me 80 to buy one individually? what am i missing?
In: 1
Some of it is what’s known as “economy of scale.” When you buy 5,000 Chromebooks, the company can ship them all at once. Running a shipping truck costs (essentially) fixed amount of money, so every additional Chromebook on the truck reduces the shipping cost per Chromebook. This also applies to things like packaging. If you can package all of the Chromebooks into a large box, you can save money versus packaging them all individually.
Some of it is also a desire to get more business. If I offer bulk discounts, I’m encouraging people to purchase my products in bulk. If I can convince someone to buy 100 Chromebooks instead of 85, I can make less profit per Chromebook and still make more total money.
Sometimes, products make more money for things like repairs and customer service. In that case, the goal is to get your product into as many hands as possible. I don’t know for sure, but I would bet that your school has some sort of software that allows them to manage all of those Chromebooks. This is likely costing them a monthly subscription, meaning that you can afford to make less on the sale of the Chromebook if you know you’ll make it up in monthly subscription costs.
Latest Answers